Matt Weiner wrote:How is this any different from the Invisible Man/The Invisible Man situation that is specifically addressed in the NAQT correctness guidelines (and the rules of every other credible quizbowl group)? Normal benefit of the doubt does not apply when the answer given creates ambiguity with another plausible answer. Players are not entitled to get away with things by effectively giving two answers, as Andy posted. Why let people give an "if this is either the god Brahma or the concept Brahman, I'm right!" answer, and not let them give an "if this is either the Wells novel or the Ellison novel, I'm right!" answer? This has been the NAQT/other quizbowl rule forever, which is why most tournaments have a "do not accept" note when they ask about the Hindu concepts.
The big difference is that, as you point out,
(The) Invisible Man is specifically listed in the NAQT Correctness Guidelines. If the rules did NOT specify that you need to exclude or include the "The" in the title of the correct book, then according to the rule regarding allowing additions or deletions of leading articles both answers would have to be acceptable for both. I would argue that is exactly the situation we find ourselves in here as "Brahma" should be an acceptable answer for both the god and the concept according to the way the rules are written in regard to accepting original language answers.
Matt Weiner wrote:Normal benefit of the doubt does not apply when the answer given creates ambiguity with another plausible answer.
Unless we force the player to clarify, we do have to apply benefit of the doubt. Especially as "Brahma" the god surely couldn't be a plausible answer... the question clearly asked for a concept, not a deity. So we need to clarify this in the rules by specifycing that only angliziced names are acceptable for Brahma/Brahman/Brahmin OR in the question by asking for the angliziced/English name.
Matt Weiner wrote:Players are not entitled to get away with things by effectively giving two answers, as Andy posted. Why let people give an "if this is either the god Brahma or the concept Brahman, I'm right!" answer, and not let them give an "if this is either the Wells novel or the Ellison novel, I'm right!" answer?
Agreed, but to make that happen we had put the rule in place for the Wells/Ellison question, and we have to do the same here.
Matt Weiner wrote:This has been the NAQT/other quizbowl rule forever, which is why most tournaments have a "do not accept" note when they ask about the Hindu concepts.
The "do not accept" note does not resolve the protest. I would argue that in this case EVEN if there was such a note (i.e. insert "Do NOT" in front of "accept") a potential protest, in this case by Dorman, should have been resolved by awarding Dorman the points. Acceptability of correct answers is always protestable if the answer can be shown to be correct according to the rules the tournament is run under, and according to NAQT rules (and as the question was written) "Brahma" was a correct answer (as silly as that is, and even though most of us had not realized that before now).
Let me also clarify that I agree with everybody else on this board that Brahma SHOULD not be acceptable in this situation, so we need to fix this for the future, especially considering that now a precedent has been set.
On a somewhat unrelated point- I had made a post earlier this morning to which Tom Egan responded, asking that that part of the discussion be moved into a separate thread. The posts are out of this thread, but I can't find the separate thread. Can somebody point me to where it is? Thanks!